


September tastes of ashes

by icefire_eyes23



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Normal Life, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:54:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28717593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icefire_eyes23/pseuds/icefire_eyes23
Summary: Forsythe Pendleton Jones III returns to his alma mater as a guest lecturer. Before the event, he sits on a swing on campus for some peace and quiet. Years have passed since he's seen his old friend Veronica Lodge, who just so happens to be in the area taking a stroll. She calls him by a nickname he hasn't heard since undergraduate and they fall into the past.
Relationships: Jughead Jones/Veronica Lodge
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	September tastes of ashes

_This was back in the days of college hours, the way that the breeze blew past their faces, mussing up the hair that their fingers would delve into later. It was alcoholic butterbeer and Halloween night and the Fridays spent on the couch or the bed or the times sitting in the business building while they offered free coffee downstairs and a fire alarm accidentally went off._

_It was like being back in undergraduate_ , he contemplated, _when my hair was longer, I still had the piercing in my ear, and I didn’t have a ring on my finger._ Blue eyes surveyed the campus that he hadn’t seen in years. They’d asked him to come back and guest-lecture, to tell the students _you can go through these programs and do what I did and end up just like me! Don’t I look successful, with my perfectly-coiffed hair and custom-tailored suit? Don’t I look happy, with a solid gold band on my ring finger and this cloth hiding the skin that I almost didn’t have the courage to get tattooed? Do what I did and you can end up just like me!_

A loveless marriage. A child that he’d wanted, only for his wife to miscarry during the last trimester. It had broken them, irreparably shattering their relationship, cold words and colder rooms until he finally picked up and came back to his home town. His best friend had only shaken his head in sympathy as he’d wrapped himself up in his other friend’s arms, not allowing the tears to drip through his eyes as his shoulders shook.

He’d spent weeks in the cocoon of his friend’s spare bedroom, wrapped in a quilt while barely eating. He didn’t do much of anything, didn’t think of much of anything, and vaguely wondered if he was ever going to be able to crawl out of his pit of despair.

And then the university had called. _Comes guest-lecture_ , they’d said. _You’re a shining Example, with your flashy job and beautiful car and the fat bank account we know you’re rolling in._ He’d shrugged and accepted. The four-hour drive wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before, especially with the lecturing fee more than covering the gas. They’d put him up in a swanky hotel that he’d only ever looked at longingly as a poor student.

**September tastes of ashes. And yet it insists. Softly. But it insists.** _Julia de Burgos had written that_ , he vaguely recalled. Who had told him that? His memory was slipshod; he’d purposely forgotten some of his undergraduate years. They were peppered with the hearts he had broken and the phone calls he’d dropped and the nights spent in the beds of too many someone elses, trying out a lover each semester to keep the loneliness at bay until he returned to who he thought would have been his high school sweetheart turned his forever.

**September insists, darling.** Who had said that to him? Who had cupped his then-bearded cheeks in her tiny hands, kissing his ring-studded fingers or turning his wrist so the inside showed, when she wanted to know what time it was? He’d told her once _you could just look at your own watch, given how fancy it is compared to mine_ and she’d laughed at him. She’d… she had laughed. _Who…?_

She’d written him a letter once or twice, during his law school years. One of them had asked him if he still walked around with his two cartilage piercings, silver chain around his neck that glinted in the sunlight around the size schmedium black tee shirt…

**Jughead?**

He shook his head to dispel the sound. He only heard the wind whistling around him as he rocked back and forth on the swing. He had another hour before his lecture and a novel in his bookbag begged for his attention. He swung his foot (and the swing) back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The sound came again, much closer this time.

**Jughead?**

_Now_ he glanced around, wondering, taking memories from the shelf and dusting them off, because no one called him that… any more. _Who…?_

**You were cannon fodder for writing, darling…** The voice echoed in his head but not in his ears. He looked around a second time, ensuring that he wasn’t having auditory hallucinations. He wouldn’t put it past his heartbreak-addled brain to conjure up a specter from his past. He looked to his right and then heard the footsteps on his left crunching through the fallen leaves.

**Jughead.**

Cool eyes were surveying him. He stiffened, feeling rather than hearing the stutter that came out when he opened his mouth. The woman looked at him with slightly raised eyebrows. They stared at one another.

_Gods, it’s been years._ He stood up barely noticing the swing knocking into the back of his knees, ignoring the papers that slid off of his lap onto the chipped painted wood. They continued staring at one another. An image of her, younger, was overlaid the older. Her hair was a different color now, and she wasn’t quite as thin as she’d been when they knew one another. A tailored blouse clung to her shoulders and torso, a thin chain glinting in the sunlight. She wore dark pants and… motorcycle boots? He shook his head and swallowed. He wasn’t sure that he wasn’t hallucinating.

She sighed.

**Jughead, you ass.**

She crossed over to him and enveloped him in a hug. Gone was the sugary-sweet vanilla perfume, replaced with something both spicy and floral.

**If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?**

That was one of the many things she’d once whispered to him late in the evenings, when they were lying on the couch or curled up in her bed. He’d always admired the way that her pale skin shone against the dark sheets, ridiculous hair fanning out over a pillow. Her breath had always hitched just the slightest amount when he’d kissed her neck, but holding back, _always holding back…_

She pulled away from him, surveying him with disbelief.

**My gods, it is you. What are you doing here?**

He managed to stammer out that he was here for a lecture and was taking a brief moment to relax before subjecting himself to the whims of the administration. She laughed.

**I’m not so much of a blessing as I am a “back away slowly”…** her laughter had echoed then, as it did now, like she hadn’t a care in the world.

**And they got** you **to do it? Oh this is hilarious. Please tell me it’s in a big lecture hall so I can sit in the back and laugh through the whole damn thing.**

That knocked him back into reality. He rolled his eyes and they fell back into the easy companionship they’d once had all of those years ago. _It’s been ten,_ some part of him quietly reflected. _It’s been ten years since we’ve seen one another._ He bantered with her and said yes, she could if she really wanted, but he couldn’t imagine why she would desire that of all things. She informed him in no uncertain terms that she thought it hysterical that the administration would bring _him_ in as an Example, given his track record of mischief. He shot back that he was surprised it wasn’t her and she rolled her eyes.

They sat and they spoke like the last decade had never occurred, catching one another up. He was a successful attorney, partner of a large firm thanks to his university connections, and now he was doing contract corporate law. He wore a suit and dress shoes and an old watch to work that she’d mailed him upon his graduation from law school. She was a successful CEO, owner and manager of a top company thanks to her family and university connections, and now she was popping by campus for a meeting with a potential investor who happened to be an alumni and professor.

The time for his lecture came and he stood up from the swing, murmuring his apologies. She rose from her place next to him and craned her neck to look up at him, reminding him that **I’ve already had my meeting for the day, so I was planning on joining you for your lecture.** Her head tilted to the side. **Unless you don’t want me to, of course.**

He’d scrambled to tell her that no, it was fine, and that he’d rather have her there than anyone else. He requested that she sit where he could easily see her and she smiled sadly but acquiesced to the request. She knew better than anyone else how much he hated public speaking, and being there for him was the least she could do.

-

Afterwards, they ended up at the local coffee shop downtown. The barista eyed the two of them and took their order, coming by their table two minutes later. The hot chocolate had been colored pink, with foam hearts surrounding the large marshmallow. He dropped it off with a wink for “the happy couple” and trundled back behind the bar, greeting the next customer who ordered plain black coffee with three shots of espresso. Her eyes hovered on the barista gently before returning to her coffee [partner] [companion] [date?].

**Are you all right?**

Her tone was gentler than he’d ever heard it. He was used to her spitting words at him, carving up the pieces of his soul that he’d dared to bare to her. He wasn’t sure what to make of this new approach. A sip of the hot chocolate later, he told her his story in slow, halting sentences. The tale of his leaving undergrad, attending law school, the wedding, the miscarriage and the failed marriage and the way that he couldn’t help but hate himself for her leaving him. He’d done what he thought he could, he explained, though he had failed to realize the extent of the damage until he came home one day and all of her things were gone. She’d left him the furniture, he noted, scoffing quietly. As if that made up for the hole that she left in his heart when she disappeared and took the cat with her. She’d left the baby’s room untouched.

Sometime during the story, her hands had slipped from their position on her mug to slide across the table and grip his, fingers strong and sure and calloused and _gods_ it had been too long since someone had reached for him without fearing the consequences.

**You fucking idiot, of course I care about you.** That was what she had spat at him during the semester they were together, when he’d gone over to her apartment to study for a midterm they shared. He’d gotten into a fight during a trip out of town. His knuckles were cut and scabbed, a bruise on his cheekbone that she’d clucked at when she saw. He had refused to tell her what had started it in the same way that he refused to tell her how it ended.

At the time, he had briefly closed his eyes to try to get the image out from behind them. The man he’d fought had taken his shirt off and thrown it in his face, trying to blind him before swinging at him with a haymaker. He had ducked and grabbed the man’s arm and swung him around until his back was scraping up against the gravel and bleeding. He’d let go of him as the man snarled and called him things and said words that he pretended he hadn’t heard before. By the end of it, the other fighter was bleeding and half-unconscious from the beating that he’d been given. He had allowed his temper to get away from him that night. He never told her.

**I’m so sorry, Jug. That’s fucking awful.**

The way that she said it lifted some of the weight from his shoulders. His family of friends had told him the same thing, but it sounded different coming from those red-painted lips. Maybe it was because his family had already known that his marriage was on the rocks. Maybe it was because someone had made a comment about them getting married so young, right after undergraduate where a chunk of their relationship had been long-distance. Whatever it was, though, she made it not matter. She’d always had that skill.

He nodded in thanks. She pursed her lips before pointedly looking at his left hand.

**Why do you still wear it?**

He swallowed. He didn’t know how to tell her that if he took it off, if he removed the ring he’d worn for the last nine years of his life, he wouldn’t know who he would be. His marriage had defined much of who he was in his twenties and he didn’t “… know how to be anything else.”

She nodded in apparent understanding. Her mouth twisted in a thoughtful expression. He wondered if she was considering running her fingers through his hair the way she used to before she would kiss her way across his stubbled cheeks. He swallowed and could almost _feel_ her breath ghosting across his skin before kissing the sides of his neck. His cheeks slowly became inflamed and her thoughtful expression turned into a decidedly delicious smirk.

**What hotel are you staying in?**

He didn’t see any reason not to tell her, not when she was looking at him like that. She nodded in acquiescence. A tug of his hand later and they were walking out to the parking lot, him in the car he’d bought with his first bonus with the firm, her on the motorcycle she later told him she’d bought a few years into her career. The hotel was quiet upon their arrival and when they got to his room she placed the “do not disturb” sign on the handle.

She’d barely shut the door behind her before he crowded into her space, looking her straight in the eyes. They’d always been of a similar height though now he was taller. She raised her eyebrows at him.

**Are you going to actually do something, or just hover until I do?**

He pressed her up against the back of the door, cupping her cheeks in his hands and kissing her as though her mouth held all of the secrets to the world (because as far as he was concerned, it did). She had always known what to do or what to say to make his world steadier. He could feel her answering smirk in the way that she kissed him back, tongue sliding across the cupid’s bow of his lips. He growled and his mouth traveled across her cheek, to her jawline, being tonguing her diamond-studded earlobe and catching it between his teeth. Her breath in his ear made him feel more alive than he’d been since before his wife left.

**Jughead…**

It wasn’t strangled, not yet, but he would be damned if he was going to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. He picked her up by the thighs and felt her legs wrap around his waist as he carried them across the room. She was deposited onto the bed with their mouths still connected. He distantly felt her push herself back and pull him forward until his knees hit the coverlet, one hand cupped around the back of his neck as she nipped at him. He toed his shoes off until they hit the floor in a pair of satisfying _clunk_ s and she smiled as she paused and removed her boots. They were thrown across the room before he was on her again, beard scratching at the side of her neck as he bit and licked and sucked his way down it and across her collarbone.

She mewled at him. Gods, he’d gotten how _responsive_ she’d been to his touch, always close to but never quite coming undone. Of course, that had been years ago. He sat up to remove his suit jacket and she slapped his hands away. _What…?_

The haze in her eyes did nothing to dull the sharp look she gave him. She slowly slid the fabric off his shoulders, laying it next to them on the bed. He stared at her. _Of course…_ She was re-enacting one of their first nights together, when he’d been at her apartment in a suit and drank too much cheap gin and she’d undressed him slowly, inch by inch, before he’d finally kissed her in his stupid drunken stupor. His vest was next, going on top of the jacket, before she undid his tie. She didn’t pull it off, though, just left it hanging around his neck as her fingers found the top button of his shirt.

_Jesus Christ._ His mouth couldn’t form the words to get out that her fingers felt like fire and he’d been cold for so long. She undid his shirt button by button, her gaze not straying from his face once. Only when she’d untucked his shirt and undone the final button did she look at his torso. The undershirt he wore was plain, white, with a v-neck he could already see her tonguing around later.

**Take it off.**

Command or request, he wasn’t really sure, but he did it anyway. The shirt and tie slid onto the floor, leaving him in his slacks and undershirt. He reached behind him and took his socks off, tossing them… somewhere. He would find it later, either that evening or in the morning, when he didn’t feel like he was being sucked into the hurricane that had always been her. She took off her own blazer and socks and bit her bottom lip in a way that he was convinced was designed to seduce. She’d never done anything in half-measures, after all, and that quality of hers certainly hadn’t appeared to have changed.

His hands began to shake. He laid them on her waist and she felt him trembling. Her nose nudged his and she kissed him gently, sweetly, all of the promises she’d never verbally made embedded into that kiss. She never did do anything in half-measures.

Her hands had somehow been placed onto his chest, but he only noticed when her thumbs slid down the planes of his torso. She tugged on the thin fabric of his undershirt and he took it off himself, throwing it somewhere across the room. She kissed him and it tasted like forgiveness. Somehow he got her shirt unbuttoned, tugged her slacks off, kicked his own away and he was staring at her in that lingerie designed to entice and he found he couldn’t swallow.

“Holy fuck.”

Her skin was inked and scarred with stories, some he knew he would try to pry out of her later, but this wasn’t the later, this was the now, and it was all he could do just to stare. She chuckled at him before unclasping her own bra and shimmying out of her thong and using her toes to slide his own boxer-briefs down. She sild across the bed on her belly and leaned over it, digging around on the floor for… her purse? She held up a slim foil and he nodded in understanding before she tossed it at him.

He didn’t catch it. It hit his chest and fell to the duvet. He made a grab for it and tried to stammer his apologies but she was already back where he was, standing next to the edge of the bed, still on her stomach as she took him in her hands and _licked_ him and oh gods he was going to start chanting to some unspecified deity any moment now as she inhaled him and the room started spinning.

The warmth of her mouth was replaced with the chilly air of the room and she tugged him forward onto the bed. He sprawled on his back at her direction, barely noticing when she slid the condom on because she was _kissing_ him and how long had it been since someone had shown him this type of unbridled affection? He couldn’t even remember.

**Jug. Darling. Stay with me, sweetheart. Are you sure?**

He blinked and was brought back to himself. She was hovering over him, one hand cupping his cheek and the other flat across his chest. Her lipstick hadn’t even come off, hadn’t smeared in the slightest or gotten on her teeth or anything. Her makeup still looked flawless.

“Yes.” He breathed it at her as she kissed him, sinking down onto him as he slid into her. “Yes” as she settled and his hands curled around her hips, “yes” as she moved and he felt her warmth spread through his body. He lost his capacity for words as she fucked, no, made love to him, kissing his cheeks and his forehead and whispering all of the things that he’d never remembered.

**Stay.**

**If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?**

She whispered her confessions to him like the leaden weights he’d always seen but never felt until she appeared in his life. She fucked him until he was breathless and aching and until he couldn’t stand it. He flipped them over onto the bed and began to pound into her, relishing each cry that escaped from her lips.

**Harder, baby. Fuck me harder.**

He did as she requested, gripping her so tightly he was sure to leave bruises, biting at the sides of her neck, shifting his weight so he took her in deeper as one of her legs came up over his shoulder. He kissed her calf and watched her eyes roll up into the back of her head. His hand opened her up to him, swiping the pad of his thumb across her clit. She jerked and her mouth fell open and her eyes gaped at him. She whined and he did it again, and again, until he was fucking her with the same intensity as both his eyes and his cock.

“Veronica.”

A series of fresh shudders broke out over her skin as he groaned her name. She tightened impossibly around him and he felt his legs jerk in reply. Her cries pushed him until he was spiraling down himself, trembling as he laid on top of her. She held him, arms wrapped around his shoulders. He breathed heavily into the side of her neck before pulling out of her and settling, the warmth of her body reminding him that no, he wasn’t alone.

Her thumb brushed across his chest as she caressed him. He had his fair share of tattoos now, and he knew that she would probably ask about his in the same way that he would ask about hers. But for now, though, he could rest. He knew that she would keep watch while he did.

**Author's Note:**

> For Puck: you may kindly go fuck yourself.


End file.
